Saratoga Springs’ top 10 OT earners

The city of Saratoga Springs spent $1.5 million on overtime in 2010, including $325,372 paid to its top ten recipients.

Nine police officers, all member of the Police Benevolent Association, and a fire department captain earned the most overtime in the city last year, each taking in between $24,867 and $40,761, records provided by city attorney Joseph Scala show.

The city’s top six overtime earners were patrol officers. Overtime payments brought the total salaries of four officers and Saratoga Springs Fire Department Captain Peter Shaw above $100,000.

Night patrolman Paul Veitch made the most in overtime – $40,761 – which brought his annual salary to $105,903 in 2010. Overtime costs paid to patrolmen Thomas Sartin, Edward Lewis Jr., and Mark Leffler brought each of their salaries to more than $100,000. Shaw, the only non-police officer on the list, made $31,492 in overtime and a total of $115,065 last year, which is more than the $95,497 made by Fire Chief Robert Williams.

“The reason why you see the salaries that you see are because we lost seven officers due to layoffs,” said Veitch, who works the late-afternoon to midnight shift and became PBA president on Jan. 1. “We had to cover for the seven that were laid off.”The top ten list was obtained through a Freedom of Information request. It contains one woman – patrol officer Eileen Cotter, who was paid $33,351 in overtime and a yearly salary of $97,924.

The city paid a total of $1,509,410 in overtime in 2010. By contrast, Colonie, which has about 50,000 more residents than Saratoga Springs, spent almost $2.6 million on overtime last year, with its top 10 recipients all in the police department.

Overtime is determined by senority, and in Saratoga Springs, is driven by vacancies, injuries and the need for extra coverage during race track season, Public Safety Commissioner Richard Wirth said. “We are constantly looking into making adjustments within the contractual situation,” he said.

Top overtime earners

Here are the top 10 overtime recipients in Saratoga Springs in 2010 with the total overtime they received and their total pay for the year:

Total pay Overtime

Paul Veitch $105,903 $40,761

Thomas Sartin $103,779 $39,819

Edward Lewis Jr. $100,800 $34,431

Mark Leffler $100,988 $33,986

Eileen Cotter $97,924 $33,351

Joseph Carey $97,345 $33,233

Peter Shaw $115,065 $31,492

Travis Carter $90,618 $27,670

Glenn Barrett $89,078 $25,758

Chris Kuznia $96,318 $24,867

Source: city attorney Joseph Scala

Dennis Yusko

6 Responses

Did Joe Scala tell you how many hours these employees were required to work for that OT pay. In some case it exceeded 800 hours, that’s twenty weeks of extra work. That means one and a half years of the average work schedule. Did Joe Scala tell you how many hours he worked for his more than 100k salary. 35 hours per week with no overtime. Dennis you should put things into perspective without the liberal twist.

After 10 hours of straight work, a persons sharpness is diminishing. Can a person working all these overtime hours really be at the peak of thier game to keep themselves from getting hurt and keep up their level of productivity? I think not.

These figures do not match other figures that were only made public by a freedom of information request by a local blogger.
You left out a fire captain who made over $100K, Capt. Jack deJohnka.
Capt. Jack was a rabble-rouser back in the 80s and now he is being rewarded with high earnings.
Don’t blame the messenger, Joe Scala is a great guy.

Police Officers put their life on the line everytime they put on their uniform. In my opinion, they are grossly underpaid. Would you risk your life for anything less than 6 figures? I sure as hell wouldn’t.